


Sweet Dreams

by Miko



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 13:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3328310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miko/pseuds/Miko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took a long time for Steve to realize there was anything odd about the way Natasha slept because, well, he so rarely <i>saw</i> her sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Minor spoilers for the Feb 3rd Agent Carter episode - I'm convinced that what we saw was the beginnings of the Black Widow program, and therefore a glimpse into Natasha's early life as well. I wanted to play with the ideas a bit, so this is more of a character study than anything else.

It took a long time for Steve to realize there was anything odd about the way Natasha slept because, well, he so rarely _saw_ her sleep. Most of the missions they were sent on together were quick, in-and-out jobs, not the sort of extended operations that would require long term fieldwork. If an op lasted less than two days, Natasha would just stay awake, as did Steve. Any longer, and she tended to take catnaps when she needed to, and otherwise be alert. 

Steve always figured she just felt too vulnerable to sleep well in an exposed location, something he could certainly understand. Then, too, he knew just enough about her background to suspect that she probably had some pretty horrific nightmares, which she wasn’t likely to want all of STRIKE to see her in the midst of.

The first real clue he had was such a minor thing, he didn’t think much of it at the time. She’d brought him to her apartment to wait while she grabbed her gear for a mission. He hadn’t _intended_ to snoop, but she’d left the door to her bedroom open and he caught a glimpse of her bed. More specifically, he saw the two sets of handcuffs dangling from the top rail of the headboard.

Steve was hardly the innocent some of his fans seemed to think he was. He knew what the cuffs were likely for, and if he was surprised at all, it was mostly because he wouldn’t have expected her to bring a casual fling here, to what was obviously meant to be a safe house. Then again, what did he know? Maybe she used them with Hawkeye, he was relatively certain they had something going on.

Still, seeing them just hanging out in the open like that was embarrassing, and he couldn’t help the blush that rose to his cheeks. Of course the moment Natasha saw him she picked up on it, and it only took her a quick glance to figure out what had caused the flush.

“Honestly, Rogers, that’s such a light kink it’s practically still vanilla,” she laughed, and slugged him in the arm. “Too risque for you, old man?”

Since Steve didn’t want to admit that most of the blush was caused by thoughts of her _in_ them, not by embarrassment _about_ them, he just shook his head and changed the subject. But the image stuck in his head for a long while afterwards.

The second clue came when they were staying at a remote S.H.I.E.L.D. base for several weeks, and were assigned private rooms. Steve went to check on Natasha the morning after a particularly brutal fight, and when she didn’t answer his knock, he grew concerned. Like him, she was almost always up with the first light of dawn, and it was highly unusual for her not to respond.

Between his time in the war and his work with STRIKE, Steve had learned a few tricks, and this base was minor enough that it didn’t have all that much in the way of internal security. He had the lock picked in less than a minute, calling her name as he pushed it open.

To say he was startled when he saw her cuffed to the bed was an understatement. Both of her hands were secured, though the cuffs were just close enough together that she would be able to reach each one with the opposite hand. She looked fragile and vulnerable, the wounds and contusions she’d taken in the fight creating stark red and black patches against her pale skin, and she seemed to still be asleep.

Who the hell would have locked her up? Who would she have _allowed_ to lock her up, for that matter? Injured or not, Steve didn’t think there was anyone on this base other than maybe himself who could force Natasha Romanoff to do anything she didn’t want to.

“Natasha?” Steve moved towards her, intending to get her free, but the moment he reached for the cuffs he found his wrist caught abruptly in her hand. When he looked down, she was glaring up at him, one eye swollen almost shut and still half asleep.

“You’d better have a damned good reason for being in my room, Rogers.” Her voice was gruff, probably with pain as much as sleep.

“You didn’t answer when I knocked,” Steve told her, tugging his hand free and stepping back so she wouldn’t feel like he was looming over her. “I thought you might have been more injured than we realized, and fallen asleep with a concussion or passed out.”

The glare softened into mere grumpiness, and she yawned. “Sweet, but unnecessary. I’m fine.” Twisting her arms in a way that looked painful, she fiddled with the cuffs briefly, then pulled her now-unfettered hands away.

Shifting awkwardly from one foot to another, Steve tried to figure out a polite way to ask _what the hell_. “Were you worried you’d pull a Hulk and attack the base in your sleep or something?”

The question made her laugh rather than offending her, thankfully. “It’s training,” she explained with a shrug. “Gotta keep my hand in, so I challenge myself to see how fast I can get free while I’m still mostly asleep. Otherwise one of these days I’ll wake up cuffed by the enemy and too drugged to function properly, and I won’t be able to get out of them quick enough to do anything about it.”

“Huh.” That made... a strange sort of sense, by spy logic. Not that Steve ever really understood spy logic, admittedly. He could see why training herself to be able to get out of bonds in any condition would be a useful skill to have, but sleeping in them when she was already that injured?

Then again, maybe the injuries were the point, since any enemy capturing her would likely hurt her first.

He shrugged it off, but the whole thing caught his interest enough that he started paying more attention. Twice more over the two years they worked together he caught a glimpse of cuffs on her bed during a long operation, though he never again saw her actually using them. 

He also realized that he _never_ saw her truly sleep, and she would go to great lengths to stay awake if there wasn’t a private room for her to hole up in. Again, that could have been simple paranoia, but Steve started to wonder.

“Can I ask you a weird question?” he asked Clint, late one night on a mission when they were standing guard duty together. Natasha hadn’t come on this job, giving Steve a rare opportunity to talk to her partner and friend alone.

“It’s a free country, Cap, you can ask anything you want. There’s just no guarantee I’ll answer.” Clint gave him a brief, sardonic smile. “Especially since I’m guessing it’s about Nat.”

“Fair enough,” Steve acknowledged. He certainly wouldn’t want Clint to give away anything Natasha had told him in confidence. “It’s just... have you ever seen her sleep? Actually sleep, not just doze or nap or pass out.”

“Plenty of times.” Clint shrugged, but there was an amused glint in his eyes. “Not many people have, though, or ever will. Are you just questioning why you’ve never seen her sleep, or are you asking about something specific?”  


“I figured the _why_ was that she wouldn’t want to be that vulnerable around other people, that seems clear enough.” Steve glanced at Clint to see if his guess was on the mark, and the other man nodded. “What I wondered was... well... have you ever seen...”

There Steve floundered, because if Clint _hadn’t_ ever seen Natasha in the cuffs, it might be Steve giving away something Natasha didn’t want known. Assuming it wasn’t all just his overactive imagination in the first place. Maybe there was nothing to give away.

Clint just nodded again, though, as if he understood what Steve wasn’t able to say. “You want to know why she sleeps in handcuffs.”

“So she does always do it?” Steve was surprised by the confirmation. He’d expected that Clint would laugh and tell him he was overreacting, or that it really was just a strange training exercise.

“More often than not, when she can get away with it. If you want to know why, you’ll have to ask her. Not my story to tell.” Clint shook his head, and patted Steve on the shoulder. “It’s far from the weirdest quirk she has, though. You learn to just roll with it.”

Steve did consider just going and asking her about it directly, but in the end he decided against it. If she wanted him to know, she’d have told him when he’d first seen her sleeping that way. As long as it didn’t affect her ability to do her job, it was really none of his damned business, and that was that.

At least, until the day it _did_ affect her ability to do the job. Several months after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., they’d teamed up again to track down one of the more dangerous escapees from the Fridge. After chasing the man half way around the world non-stop for two and a half days, plus another day hunting him on foot through forest too thick to bring a vehicle through, they finally ran the target to ground. It was a rough battle; by the end Natasha was staggering with exhaustion, and even Steve was pretty damned eager to have a nice, flat surface to collapse on.

Unfortunately, they were in the middle of nowhere and finding shelter wasn’t going to be as simple as walking to the nearest hotel. In the last of the fading daylight they rigged a lean-to of fallen branches, covered the ground beneath it with relatively soft fir boughs, and closed themselves in. At least they’d brought survival gear with them, so they had blankets and food. In all honesty, it wasn’t any worse than plenty of nights Steve had spent camped out with the Commandos during the war, and better than some.

Natasha settled in without a word of complaint, but she also didn’t lie down to sleep. “I’ll take the first watch, you get some rest,” she said as she leaned against the large rock they’d used as the back wall of their shelter. “You took the brunt of his attacks, you must be exhausted.”

“We’re both exhausted, and there’s not a lot of need to keep a watch,” Steve countered, frowning at her. “We know he was on his own, and it’s not like there’s anyone else out here to sneak up on us. We must be a hundred miles from the nearest town, maybe more.”

“We don’t know for certain that he wasn’t heading for a meet-up with someone, and that someone might come looking when he doesn’t show,” Natasha replied. “Plus there are always wild animals to consider. I’m fine.”

“You’re _not_ fine, you look like you’re about to keel over,” Steve said, his frown turning to a scowl. He struggled not to let himself snap at her; he didn’t want to start an argument, and as weary as they both were, simple irritability could all too easily lead them into one.

“Maybe I should have said, ‘I’m fine, _mom_ ’,” Natasha snorted. “I know my own limits, Rogers. Don’t patronize me.”

There was an awkward silence for a few moments. Finally Steve sighed. He was fairly certain now that he knew why she was balking, and if he was right there was no real reason for her to suffer. “Would it help if I tie your hands?” he asked, quietly enough that if she wanted to, she could pretend she hadn’t heard him.

He saw her jerk in response to the words, her eyes narrowing as she stared at him like she was debating between answering or just shooting him for his audacity. She opened her mouth, and he was certain she was about to tear a strip off him for the invasion of her privacy.

But then her shoulders sagged, and she sighed and slumped against the rock. “Wouldn’t help,” she admitted, her voice hoarse with what he thought was more than just weariness. “It has to be handcuffs, but there’s nothing to attach them to. If I put them around the support pole, I’ll bring the whole thing down on our heads if I move in my sleep.”

That implied that she _had_ handcuffs with her, at least. Not surprising, if she truly needed them to sleep. Steve was simultaneously shocked that she’d actually admitted it, and touched that she trusted him enough to do so.

He considered the problem, studying the area around them. She was right that there really wasn’t anything that would work. The branches built into the walls would be too difficult to get the cuffs around without taking the wall apart in the process, and the fir boughs beneath them were too fragile to be able to hold against any amount of pressure.

“You could cuff yourself to me, I guess,” he finally offered. “I’m certainly not going to budge, no matter how much you move.”

“You’d do that?” She was staring at him again, with a speculative expression this time like she was trying to decide what his angle was. Actually, that was probably exactly what was going through her mind, because for her, everything was about working the angles and she sometimes forgot that not everybody was the same way. “You’re being remarkably blasé about this, for a guy who blushed bright enough to clash with his shield the first time he saw cuffs on my headboard.”

“This is different,” Steve insisted. “I’m not going to judge you, Nat. Hell, I saw people do weirder things, trying to sleep on the front lines during the war. If it’s what you need, then it’s what you need. And if you _don’t_ sleep, you’re going to pass out instead and I’m going to have to carry you out of here.”

Her lips twitched in the faint ghost of a smile. “Get comfortable, then. If you move around, I’ll just wake up again.”

Steve resettled himself, making certain there weren’t any rocks or branches poking him in uncomfortable places, and offered his hands to her. She waved off his right, pulling two pairs of handcuffs out of her gear and snapping them both around his left wrist instead. “This way, in the unlikely event that anything does come at us, you’ve still got a hand free for the few seconds it takes me to unlock them,” she explained as she closed the other halves over her wrists.

Then she settled in as well, curling up close but not actually touching him, with her arms up over her head. Almost immediately he saw the tension drain out of her, like the position was some kind of trigger. She sighed, as if in relief, and closed her eyes.

Her breathing slowed, and he thought she’d dropped straight off to sleep until she spoke again. “They always cuffed us to the beds at night. At first it was to keep us from trying to run away, but later I think it was also to stop us from trying to sabotage each other.”

Her voice was soft enough that he had to strain to hear her, even as close as they were, and she kept her eyes closed. “Not only were we expected to fight, even kill each other when ordered to, the instructors would ambush us. Any time, any place. Nothing was safe - not when we were eating, not when we were in the classroom, not even when we were bathing. They wanted us to learn to be prepared no matter what, and never be taken by surprise.”

Steve said nothing, though he had to bite his lip to keep a hundred angry questions and furious exclamations from spilling out. If he spoke, he was afraid she wouldn’t continue, and he wanted to hear all of this. He thought, just maybe, she needed to _say_ all of this.

“Even they weren’t sadistic enough to attack us when they’d left us with no way to fight back, though.” She shrugged, the motion rattling the cuffs softly. “So the only time it was ever safe to sleep, to let our guard down even a little, was when we were cuffed to the beds. After I left, I discovered pretty quickly that without them, I can’t convince my subconscious that I won’t be attacked the moment I close my eyes. So, now you know.”

The last statement made it pretty clear that she was done, and Steve sifted carefully through all the possible responses he could make. “Seems perfectly understandable, then,” he settled on, fighting to keep his tone neutral. 

Apparently he didn’t succeed as well as he’d hoped, because she opened her eyes and gave him a wry smile. “Don’t feel _too_ sorry for me, Steve. If not for the program, I wouldn’t be here now. Not just here, with you, but here at all. I was a penniless orphan in one of the worst areas in Russia. I’d have died before I even hit my teens. They gave me food and shelter, training and a purpose. I’m grateful to them, twisted as that probably is.”

“Well, the headshrinkers would probably have a lot to say about it, but again, I think I can understand,” Steve said. This time he didn’t try to be neutral, but let some of his very real sympathy show. “I’m not sorry for you, exactly. I think it’s a horrible thing that was done to you, but it also made you who you are now, and you’re amazing. I suppose in the same way I’m grateful to everyone who ever beat me up, and all the army clerks who turned me down when I tried to sign up. If not for them, I wouldn’t be where I am now, either.”

As he’d hoped, the words earned him a more genuine smile. At that positive sign, he dared to tease her. “Which is not to say I wouldn’t punch them out if they tried to beat me up now.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” she laughed. “I’d snap their necks in a heartbeat, I’d just say thank you as I did it.”

"Get some rest, Natasha. It’s going to be a long trek back in the morning.” Steve hesitated, then reached out with his free hand to brush a lock of hair out of her face. 

Her smile widened a little, and she closed her eyes again. “You too, Steve. And… thank you.”

There was a wealth of meaning behind those two simple words, conveyed in her tone. She was thanking him for holding the cuffs, and for not teasing her, and for not judging her. Thanking him for trying to understand, and for being someone she trusted enough to be able to sleep around. 

“Any time,” he told her, and he intended it as an answer to all of her meanings. 

Closing his eyes, he listened as her breathing grew gradually softer and slower, and he knew she’d fallen asleep. Smiling a little to himself, Steve drifted off as well. Natasha might well be the strangest woman he’d ever met in many ways, but he wouldn’t trade away her friendship and trust for anything.


End file.
